News Coverage
Public wakes to preservative's dangers
'Arsenic does not disappear and is not biodegradable. It's there forever. It's very, very nasty. Chromium causes cancer,
Published November 25, 2002
Hanging on the wall of David McCrea's law office in Bloomington, Indiana, is his most prized possession. It is an internal memo given to him in 1984 by a scientist involved in the treated timber industry. The whistleblower wrote the report in 1977 and it documents instances of serious injury suffered by people who came into contact with timber treated with chromated copper arsenate.
The memo, written by Robert Arsenault, was not shared by the industry with the federal governing body -- the Environment Protection Agency -- who relied on industry testing in assessing the risks of CCA timber.
The memo has won Mr McCrea three lawsuits against treated timber manufacturers -- each averaging $ US330,000 (NZ$ 673,000) -- and it will be used in another three cases he is preparing for.
"If I have seen three cases and have others coming in in little old Bloomington, Indiana, there must be hundreds of thousands of similar cases across America," Mr McCrea told The Dominion Post.
And there are. Two class actions against manufacturers, suppliers and retailers are under way and as awareness has been raised and doctors become more familiar with the latest research, the public is seeking compensation for injuries and illnesses arising from using CCA timber. A lawyer in Alabama is expecting his workload to exceed 2000 cases.
Law suits are the end process in what has been a bitter 18 months for the $ US4 billion treated timber industry in the United States and Canada. On February 14, the Environmental Protection Agency announced all CCA treated timber would be phased out by the end of next December after it had been in use for 70 years. Canada followed suit two months later after Germany, Sweden and Japan banned the wood years ago.
New Zealand still uses about a million cubic metres of treated timber a year, with Carter Holt Harvey and Fletcher Challenge Forest the biggest players in the market. There is no legislation requiring it to be labelled or for information sheets on how it should be used to be handed out at the point of sale.
CCA is 22 per cent arsenic by weight and is combined with another carcinogen, chromium, and copper to help preserve timber outdoors.
The final push in banning the product in the US came through consumer pressure and the pressure applied to federal authorities by a coalition of two environmental groups -- the Healthy Building Network and the Environmental Working Group.
And continuing scientific data shook a lethargic public awake. It is now unchallenged that arsenic leaches from treated timber into soil, while new evidence shows cancer-causing doses can be contracted through touching the surface of treated timber.
The "it won't happen to me" attitude has been shattered and right across America playgrounds, decks on homes and outdoor furniture has been ripped out from public and private areas. And confusion in the marketplace over which type of wood was treated with arsenic was caused by an estimated 25 different brand names being used.
"This arsenic is a metal," Mr McCrea said. "It does not disappear and is not biodegradable. It's there forever. It's very, very nasty. Chromium causes cancer, arsenic causes cancer. Together they're highly dangerous."
Mississippi couple Tom and Lynn Milam found out how lethal. After six admissions to hospital and several misdiagnoses Mrs Milam eventually found that arsenic was behind her vomiting, diarrhoea and other assorted ailments that nearly killed her in 1999.
But the relief of finding out the cause was shattered when first police and then the FBI approached her and told her to leave her husband because they feared he was trying to poison her, such were the levels of arsenic in her body.
The Milams had built an A-frame hideaway using CCA treated timber. They had inhaled the sawdust and got splinters from the wood. Mr Milam was tested and found to have even higher levels of arsenic than his wife, but practitioners were still coming to grips with the medical side-effects of CCA timber and the FBI persisted with a charge of attempted murder against Mr Milam.
A grand jury, however, found he had no case to answer and the Milams have sued several manufacturers and a trade group. Two of Mr McCrea's court wins have been for workers poisoned by CCA -- one by inhalation, the other by splinters. In August, Laurette Janak of New York wrote a heart-wrenching letter to the EPA detailing injuries inflicted on her daughter by CCA wood. Then she began to investigate.
"My school district told me that 10 per cent of the school population are children with what I call 'abbreviation disorders' -- ADD, ADHD, PDD, LD, ASD," she wrote. " . . . elevated arsenic was frequently found among the children tested."
An estimate says 90 per cent of all outdoor structures in America are made from arsenic-treated timber. The problem the country is grappling with now is what to do with it. In a state such as Florida, where the soil is predominantly sandy and the water table very high, there are concerns that huge landfills of treated timber could affect the water supply.
"Treated timber has been the best kept secret in the United States since the Manhattan Project," Mr McCrea said.